Lawyers at the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are involved in talks with three sets of local authority regulators. This is because of the implications of local authorities pooling achievements whereas targets will be imposed on individual councils.
The general view from DEFRA towards pooling is that local authorities should be able to pool where they want to, although areas some distance from each other, for example Cornwall and the North-East would not be able to do so.
DEFRA sources say that the “general idea is that authorities through pooling should do no less recycling than they would have done.”
For councils with lower achievements, the pooling approach could be of benefit if authorities teamed up with higher achievers. And, the higher achievers could benefit it the lower achievers were to catch up and the achievements shared.
The Audit Commission has also entered the debate saying that local authorities in local areas should work together “with greater urgency and open-mindedness. This applies particularly to authorities in two-tier structures (county waste disposal authorities and district waste collection authorities and joint waste disposal authorities) and to unitary authorities where cross boundary working is a practical option.”
One concern among local authorities is that county councils could have an advantage over district councils and that similar differences apply with unitaries.
Paul Deakin, vice chair of Larac said: “The issue concerns where a district council cannot count waste recycled by its residents at a CA site. But, the county counts the waste residents recycle through kerbside collections organised by the district.
“In effect were are victims of our own success. Where we have a local success nobody seems able to work on a level playing field.”
It is expected that DEFRA will look at this problem, which will impact on several authorities on the south coast of Engalnd.
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